Roundabout #6
The Dogs dig in, and the Pies send a shudder through the comp.
Hello readers,
Two topics for this week’s Roundabout. First, how the Bulldogs combined fantastic spread from stoppages with mid-zone turnovers to utterly flummox the Saints, and second, how Collingwood turned into Hulk Hogan halfway through their clash with Port.
A combination of Round 7 starting on Wednesday (!) night, and a busy few days ahead in my day job, mean that in all likelihood, I won’t have time for a Round 7 preview. I hope you enjoy it anyway, despite the fact that without my guidance, you won’t know how to make sense of what you’re watching (that’s a joke).
The Dogs dig in
Just as it seemed the criticism of the Western Bulldogs and coach Luke Beveridge had reached a tipping point, they put in the kind of performance which reminded the rest of the competition that, at their best, they’re still a formidable side. They absolutely smashed St Kilda by getting their hands on the ball first, generating low-risk territory gains, and creating turnovers up the field.
Before we look at some clips that illustrate how they did it, let’s consider some stats. As expected, the Dogs dominated clearances. But it’s what they did after winning first possession that was the most striking feature of their ball use. The Dogs took 148 marks, their most in a single game since Round 3, 2018 (152 vs. Essendon). Normally, the Saints don’t mind conceding marks. Only one team conceded more per game in 2023 – and no side conceded more intercept marks. It’s part of how they like to defend: funnel their opponents into non-threatening positions and force long kicks to turn the ball over inside defensive 50.
But on Thursday, the Dogs were regularly able to pierce the Saints’ defensive structure by moving the ball into dangerous positions – especially following clearance wins.
Rory Lobb provided a very good outlet all night, especially favouring the lead up the left-side wing. Even when the Dogs were forced to dump it forward, their superiority in the air and on the ground meant they were often able to force neutral or even advantageous situations.
Just as impressive as the Dogs’ work exiting stoppages, and the reason why a comfortable win became a massive one, was their success in defending transition. The Dogs are an average intercepting side (I mean average in the neutral sense, not the pejorative). On Thursday, they were absolutely elite. They had a total of 70 intercept possessions and took 20 intercept marks. While those numbers are good, the reason the Dogs kicked 71 points from chains originating from turnovers is because of how high up the field they were able to create them. They took 16 of their 20 intercept marks between the two 50-metre arcs. Doing so allowed them to harness a very simple proposition: the higher up you win the ball, the shorter the path to goal.
The Dogs took so many mid-zone intercept marks because they managed to turn the Saints’ biggest offensive weapon – advancing the ball via the wings – into a liability. Let’s look at a couple of examples.
Darcy Wilson (who didn’t disgrace himself on the night, and was in fact received the Round 6 Rising Star nomination) received the ball on the defensive side of the left wing – and saw this. No viable down-the-line options, nothing in the corridor, and not much on the 45 degree kick either. Eventually he tried to balance risk with reward and kicked to his ruckman, Rowan Marshall. The kick was just slightly too high, which allowed Jack Macrae to steal in and effect the turnover.
Jones, in truth, did everything right except the last bit. But even here, the Dogs had structured up well behind the well. Marcus Bontempelli was in the perfect spot to gather the ball and send it inside 50.
Forcing high turnovers allowed the Dogs to frequently catch the Saints up the field before their wingers and half-backs could drift back to help their undersized defenders. It’s impossible to overlook the influence of Bailey Dale in all of this. The two-time All-Australian defender – a substitute against Essendon – was absolutely supreme against the Saints, racking up 39 disposals (at 92 percent efficiency) and 13 intercept possessions. Some less-heralded players like Riley Garcia, Harvey Gallagher and Ed Richards also did important work in stemming the Saints’ ball movement from half-back, while Aaron Naughton and Lobb’s ability to either mark the ball or bring it to ground and facilitate Dogs ground ball gets prevented the Saints from being anywhere near as effective when it came to attacking from their intercepts.
What would please Beveridge and Dogs fans was that the win wasn’t overly dependent on either clearances or turnovers as a source of scoring. The Dogs scored 7.3 from chains starting from clearance wins, and 11.5 from turnovers. That ratio is more-or-less in line with the AFL average. The Zak Jones clanger also revealed an uncomfortable truth: as good as the Dogs were, the Saints had an awful night at the office. They made 74 clangers – 36 more than the Dogs. I’ve combed through the archives (meaning I’ve manually clicked through their games on AFLTables) and the only game I can find that’s even close is when they made 34 more clangers than the Eagles. In Round 17, 2008. That’s what is often required for two nominally well-matched sides to have such an unequal contest.
This post is free. But they won’t all be. Please consider supporting my work with a subscription.
Collingwood remind everyone they’re still here
For a quarter and a half of Saturday afternoon’s heavyweight clash, Port looked like they were grinding the Premiers into the MCG dirt. Sure, they were playing an obviously diminished Collingwood side, but they had the game they wanted. And then, the Pies stood up on their feet and, Hulk Hogan-style, started raining blows against their opponent, seemingly totally immune to any counterattacks.
The second half of Saturday’s game wasn’t just a return to the Collingwood of last season. This was a return to the first month of last season, when they looked head and shoulders above every other side in the competition. Interestingly, perhaps the apogee of that blistering early-season form in 2023 was… against Port at the MCG. The stats actually make for an interesting comparison. (Collingwood’s numbers are on the left, Port on the right.)
Look at that stat down the very bottom. On Saturday, the Pies generated a scoring shot with 33 percent of their possession chains. To simplify it a bit more: one scoring shot for every three times they started with the ball from a turnover, clearance win or kick-in. That's their highest percentage under Craig McRae – and just the second time under him that the Pies have managed to create a scoring shot with more than 30 percent of their possession chains.
When you consider that Port actually had the better of the first quarter-and-a-half, Collingwood’s performance on Saturday was actually even more dominant than in the corresponding fixture last season. But numbers on a page don’t tell us all that much about the game on grass. So how did they do it?
Enjoying my breakdown of the Pies’ win against Port ? Please consider sharing it with a mate!
I saw two things. The first was Collingwood’s ability to counter Port’s attacking prowess at centre bounces. Port are unusually sensitive to the outcome of centre bounces because they’re unusually aggressive. Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll believe former Melbourne ruckman Jeff White, who recently posted a great breakdown of how Port’s midfielders positioned themselves at centre bounces against Essendon. Everything was geared towards exiting the front of the stoppage at maximum velocity. In their wins so far this season, Port have averaged +12.75 points per game from chains which started from centre bounce clearances. Winning centre bounces matters for Port for reasons other than direct scoring. They love playing the game in their forward half. It’s their main source of scoring, and the field position they feel most comfortable defending from. Port essentially bet that their main centre bounce trio of Rozee, Butters and Horne-Francis can beat whoever you put out. And – most of the time – it works. But even smart bets lose sometimes. The downside of Port’s aggression is they often leave themselves defensively vulnerable when they lose clearances in key parts of the ground. That’s what Collingwood managed to do on Saturday. The Pies kept Port to just a solitary point from a chain originating from a centre bounce clearance win, and ultimately recording a +21 differential.
Here’s the kind of centre square arrangement Port wanted:
They had match-ups they wanted, arranged the way they wanted them. Here you can see that Zak Butters had total separation from Tom Mitchell, Ollie Wines was minding Jack Crisp, and Jason Horne-Francis was standing next to Scott Pendlebury. Horne-Francis eventually won the centre clearance after reading Pendlebury’s attempted tap to Mitchell. He dished off a handball to Butters, who spread it by hand to the on-running winger, Jase Burgoyne. Todd Marshall would probably have marked the kick if his lead hadn’t been obstructed by Willie Rioli getting in the way. That was one of the few high-quality, recognisably “Port” centre clearances the South Australian side won for the day. And it was because of being afforded this kind of space that Zak Butters, one of the most damaging players in the AFL, had 15 disposals in the first term.
For the rest of the game, Collingwood gave Port looks like this instead:
The umpire is about to bounce the ball. And Jordan De Goey is so close to the centre circle it looks like he might be about to nominate for the ruck contest. This was ostensibly an attacking move. But really it was about denying Port’s prime movers the space they needed to wreak havoc. De Goey’s size and speed also made him a good candidate to impede Port’s quick midfielders from receiving the ball at speed. The more the Pies could turn centre clearances into a contest of strength rather than one of speed, the better for them.
That approach was perhaps best exemplified by this centre bounce late in the second quarter. Although Ivan Soldo won the hit-out, the best he could do was palm the ball to Willem Drew, who had de Goey on his hammer. Drew eventually paddled it to Butters, but de Goey followed up with another pressure act before the Port midfielder could take possession. That left youngster Jackson Mead with the unenviable task of trying to fight off De Goey and the Daicos brothers. Unsurprisingly, Collingwood turned the ball over and kicked it forward.
The scores from turnover overlay is the perfect segue for the next thing I want to discuss: Collingwood’s ability to create turnovers in the middle third of the ground. Port are a very direct side. No side kicks it with a higher share of their disposals. The drawback of that directness is that their ball movement patterns can become slightly predictable. As the game went on, the Pies exploited that in two ways. First, they increased their pressure. Port’s players had less space and fewer viable targets. That resulted in lower-percentage kicks down the line which the Pies started gobbling up. Here’s a good example.
After taking an intercept mark, Esava Ratugolea handed it off to Aliir Aliir. Aliir’s direction of travel and the fact Collingwood were covering the corridor meant there was only one place he could go: down the line. That’s what he duly did. Then, a couple of things happened which would have made Collingwood fans very happy. Firstly, Darcy Moore made the correct decision to come off his man and force the spoil. Brayden Maynard beat his direct opponent, Sam Powell-Pepper, to the contest. And Nick Daicos was in the perfect position to pick up the ground ball and pass it off to Maynard. A mid-zone turnover, in three easy steps. This was a constant feature of Collingwood’s steamroller of a comeback: their forwards and attacking midfielders disrupted Port’s ability to transition from half-back, they got more players to the contest, and they swiftly turned it over.
In the table above, you can see that Collingwood created 67 turnovers. That’s a good number, but not an extraordinary one. It’s where they created them that meant the Pies scored 72 points from turnover (10.12 – it should have been more!) while conceding just 38. Here’s an image taken from Emlyn Breese’s visual match report:
43 of the 67 turnovers that the Pies created – so almost two-thirds – were between the 50-metre arcs. And the vast majority of those were on the wings. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a response to how Port players like Dan Houston were using the ball coming out of defence, and an integral part of Collingwood’s attacking game.
A feature of Collingwood under Craig McRae has been their tendency to attack through the “half-spaces” – the strip of the field between the centre square and the true wing. Imagine the spot where the AFL logo is on the MCG and you’re about there. Doing that allows them to stick or twist. If the space is there to move the ball closer to the centre corridor, they’ll take it and open up new angles of attack. Alternatively, if they’re forced wide, they can shuffle the ball wide to retain possession or force a stoppage.
I’m going to hold off for at least another couple of weeks before making a pronouncement about whether the Pies are “back”. While this was comfortably their best performance of the season so far, it came against a side they match up quite well against. But the direction of travel is positive. Their first few weeks saw them look slightly adrift against better-prepared opposition sides. But they’ve progressively added layers to their game. Against Brisbane and Hawthorn, they significantly increased their pressure and tackling. Against Port, the attacking flair returned. Let’s see how they go in the next month.